I have been fortunate in my martial arts career to train with and be exposed to so many martial arts teachers, systems, and curricula. This truly is the information age of martial arts. In this time I've had an almost constant struggle of how to arrange my training (and now teaching) so that all the "important stuff" gets worked in and the "less important" stuff doesn't eat up valuable time. The irony is that I think this dilemma is as common with martial art monogamists (my term for those that have the attention span to devote themselves to a single art or style) as it is with those of us that prefer a cross-training approach. I'm sure there are great BJJ practitioners out there that have thought "Man, I need to work my guard, my half guard, my knee on belly, escapes...sheesh! There just isn't enough time." Add a supplemental strength and conditioning practice to any martial arts training regimen and this dilemma only gets bigger.
Let's face it. Unless you work a night job, sleep only 4 hours a night, and train at the Inosanto Academy, the Minnesota Kali Group, or any number of similar schools for the bulk of your day (and we do know people that have done this!), it's pretty darn tough to try and "fit it all in" day in and day out.
For some, the way to solve this issue is simply to eliminate certain aspects from your training altogether. This is akin to spring cleaning and going into the garage to throw out anything that's just taking up space, or throwing away clothes that you haven't worn in 6 months or more. While I don't encourage anyone to become a hoarder (literally or figuratively), the danger in this approach lies in the short-sighted thought that we will never have need of these training methods or arts. I think a healthier and more mature attitude is to "leave the cage door open so the bird can return." In other words, to file something away and say "there will be a time for me to get back to this, but I just don't have the time or energy for it right now."
For example, I've been on a bit of a BJJ hiatus as of late, not because I don't like BJJ or think it is important, but I've just come to the realization that I don't have the time or energy to devote to it right now in light of other goals I currently have. At times I regret this decision, as I see my friends and fellow training partners making progress while I myself am getting rustier by the day (or at least stagnating), but the fact is that life is about prioritizing.
I think an important lesson to take from this, and one it's taken me 30 plus years to learn is quite simply "you don't have to do it all right now." Sure, being in your 20's without a family certainly leaves you with an abundance of free time to train, and at several points while in my 20's I thought to myself "I'd better make the most of this time now, because when I'm married with 2.5 kids I won't have time to do this." That is not to say, however, that I'll "never have time." After all, I have several students that are in their 40's/50's just starting martial arts for the first time. I have a friend and training partner who started BJJ for the first time in his late 40's and is now an active and very successful BJJ competitor. If you have a passion for the martial arts, especially as vehicle(s) of self development, then it truly is never too late to start.
If there are areas that you do not want to eliminate from your training altogether, but which you prefer to "keep on the back burner" then it is important to make the most of the minimal time you are going to spend working in these areas. When it comes to managing your training time for your current goals as well as these "backburner" activities, I think we each need to do the best we can to find the activities/drills/training methods that give us the biggest bang for our buck. I also see this as my main objective as an instructor. If I have students that are training anywhere from 1 to 4 hours per week, it is crucial that I help them make the absolute most of that training time so that they are still able to progress and get results.
This is sometimes referred to as the "big rocks" method of time management. If you were asked to fill a jar with as many of the following items as you could, in what order would you place each in the jar?
-Sand
-Small Pebbles
-Big Rocks
-Water
The most successful approach to this is the put the big rocks in first, then the small pebbles, the sand, and finally the water. The big rocks are analogous to the "big bank for your buck" tasks-those things that are the most important to you and/or give you the most benefit.
In the area of kickboxing skills, the recently implemented North Shore Academy Pad Holding system is an attempt to satisfy this need. Are you going to work 100% of your kickboxing skills within these drills? Probably not. But these drills will give you the biggest bang for your buck and allow you to continuously maintain and refine your combinations, coordination, and conditioning for your kickboxing skillset. (Have no fear, NSA students, your instructors are hard at work trying to implement similar processes for your weaponry, trapping/close range tactics, and grappling/groundfighting needs as well).
In this approach, we are not so much focusing on eliminating anything or claiming certain skills are unnecessary or useless, rather we are attempting to focus our efforts on getting our students "most of the way there" with as streamlined a curriculum as possible.
You could of course use the same approach for your solo training or supplemental strength/conditioning practices. In the larger sense, this means figuring out what areas you need to work to get the biggest performance boost. Are you lacking strength, endurance, or flexibility? Which one of these areas is holding you back the most in your martial arts performance ability? Which of these areas could you get directly from your martial arts training, and which areas are truly in need of supplemental work?
For me, a great example is maximal strength development. Max strength is something I haven't developed fully, would have a great benefit for my overall athleticism, and is very hard to develop through martial arts training alone. Contrast that with endurance, something that I've tended to focus on for more of my training career, and something that is easily developed through martial arts specific training methods (thai pad drills, sparring, etc.) So now I've effectively streamlined my supplemental training needs, and can focus my time off the mat on getting the biggest bang for my buck. Since my intention is to use this as an example and not to give you a rundown of how I spend all my free time, I'll stop there.
To finish up, I really would like to revisit the idea of making the false assumption that certain training methods/arts are useless or not worth our time. One of the biggest influences on my martial arts career in this regard is Guro Rick Faye of the Minnesota Kali Group. I've often said that Guro Rick "came along" at just the right time in my training career (which is not to say that he wasn't there all along, it was just that we hadn't had the privilege of hosting him for a seminar yet). At the time, I was all about "functional martial arts," which is to say that I spent most or all of my training time focusing on the things that I thought were the most applicable in a fight.
In my mind, such things as sparring, hitting thai pads, grappling, and working on my conditioning were crucial to my training, whereas much of my Kali training, hubud, trapping drills, silat, etc. was all "just goofing around" or "just for fun." Well, like I said, that was before Guro Rick came to our school. That first seminar it felt as though he was reading my mind, and offered up numerous reasons as to why these training methods were just as important as anything my relatively immature 20-something mind deemed as "functional." More important than that, Guro Rick challenged each of us to examine the role that martial arts training played in our life, rather than just thinking of the martial arts as being all about fighting. It was amazing and disappointing that even after nearly a decade spent training in the martial arts, I still hadn't figured this out. Since that time, Guro Rick has become one of my absolute favorite instructors, and I always look forward to any opportunity to train with this great man. I've said on several occasions that I believe him to be arguably the best TEACHER of martial arts I've ever seen.
Here is a short video interview courtesy of MKG Seattle in which Guro Rick discusses his perspective on the often quoted Bruce Lee line of "Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is specifically your own." Enjoy.
